


The Libra Chronicle s01e01: "Judge of Character"

by alex_greene



Series: The Libra Chronicle [2]
Category: Hunter: The Reckoning
Genre: Graphic Description of Corpses, Horror, Hunter Code, White Wolf - Freeform, hunter: the reckoning - Freeform, imbued, onyx path publishing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 21:24:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20298172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alex_greene/pseuds/alex_greene
Summary: After his harrowing imbuing, Gregory Malpas Stewart offers a home to Martin, one of the hunters he met in the incident.Gregory receives a mysterious note which introduces him to The Word, one of the mysterious gifts bestowed upon him by the cryptic agency which gave him The Choice, to become an imbued hunter and investigate the supernatural elements inhabiting the World of Darkness.Later, prompted by a message from this distant spiritual agency, Gregory and Martin pursue a sighting of a possible mobile corpse in an old cemetery. He discovers that the imbued are not the only beings who chase down the creatures of darkness - some of the forces of darkness are motivated to chase the same foes, for their own reasons.Some motives, such as the pursuit of justice, are all too familiar to the fledgling Judge-creed hunter ...





	The Libra Chronicle s01e01: "Judge of Character"

**The Libra Chronicle s01e01: “Judge of Character”**

for **Hunter: the Reckoning**

by Alex Greene

* * *

From _The Imbued Memoirs of "Codename Libra,"_ discovered on a flash drive on August 3, 2019, on a chair in St John's Food Court, Liverpool.

* * *

I don't know what drove me to help out the street guy, whose name was Martin. He didn't give me his last name.

I think it was because we'd both seen what we'd seen, and that we couldn't turn back the clock and not see it. I also had a spare room, a few spare bits of toiletries, and plenty of spare clothes. Martin didn't want charity, and I told him that I wasn't just helping out some homeless dude – I was helping out someone who'd seen some Things. Like the ones I'd seen.

It just seemed right, somehow, to reach out to help. It felt weird, but since that moment that I saw the truth, I had felt this strange sense of, I don't know what.

I'd have to describe it in terms of the events which followed from my first encounter with the truth.

* * *

The morning after, I got up and went to the upper bathroom. I could hear Martin moving about in the downstairs room. I spent my usual twenty minutes performing my ablutions, got dressed, and headed into the kitchen.

Somebody had left me a note. They'd put it through the letterbox. Just scrawled signs, all lines and dots, but somehow they made sense.

I brought them to Martin, who had just come into the kitchen from his room.

'Morning,' Martin said.

'Hi,' I replied. 'Was the accommodation okay?'

'Yes, thanks,' Martin replied. 'I can't remember the last time I had clean clothes waiting for me.'

'If you want to go back to the old clothes, I can get them washed for you,' I said.

'No, they're too far gone,' Martin replied. 'Get rid of them. Thanks.'

'Sure.'

We sat down to eat. Both of us ate in silence. When we finished, we sat back, nursing mugs of tea.

'There are other beings like the ones we encountered,' Martin said, after a time.

'Beings?'

'Yeah, like that shambler, and the … the manipulator? I guess you could call her that,' Martin replied 'We all received the same kind of revelation you had, I guess. Me, Tony and Janey. Until you showed up, there were only the three of us that we know of – but there are loads of Them out there.'

'Them?' I asked. Martin tore off a piece of paper from a notepad, grabbed a biro, and drew something in lines and dots. I had a weird feeling that I'd seen something like this before. It seemed to read “shuffler” or “it walks, but it is dead.” Part of me thought it read “hijacked vessel” as well, but I had no idea what it meant, unless the shambler had once stolen a yacht or something.

'That was the shuffler.' I said, tapping the symbol.

'There's a lot of them around,' Martin replied, drawing a second symbol – one which left the impression that it was conveying the meaning of “manipulator” or “corrupter.”

'That was the other one,' I replied. 'The controller.'

'How did you know it was a controller?' Martin asked.

'I don't know,' I said. 'I saw bands coming from the breather, the manipulator. Threads of energy, like some weird … sort of web? Could the breather have been trying to bind it or something?'

'Monsters enslaving their own,' Martin murmured. 'I thought I'd seen it all.'

'I'm still coming to terms that they exist,' I replied. 'When did we step through the looking glass?'

'August, for me,' Martin replied. 'My wife and I were in the throes of a divorce when we saw the Creature who killed our daughter.'

My tea tried to go down the wrong way. 'I … I'm sorry, _what_?'

'Her name was Alicia,' Martin said. 'We married in June of 1998. I would have given my all for my wife. And when Alicia was born in April, I would have laid down my life for her.'

He put his mug down and looked me in the eye. 'You ever hear of the trolley problem?'

'I'm aware of it,' I said. 'If it's the same one you're thinking of.'

'The one where there's a tram coming down the track.'

'And you've got your hands on the switch, and you can send it down the sideline or the main branch,' I replied. 'Only there are people on both tracks.'

'That's the one,' Martin replied. 'They're all tied up by some bastard and left to die. You can save one, but not both, and it depends on where you throw the switch.'

'Yeah,' I said. 'What of it?'

'I thought of the different scenarios, over and over,' Martin said. 'What if it were Alicia on one line and my wife on the other? What if it were the two of them on the same line, and Slobodan Milosevic or Radovan Karadzic on the other? Maybe Kim Jong-Il, too?'

I smiled. 'No question about that one,' I replied. 'What about it?'

'I told my wife Alicia that if it came to it, I'd throw the switch onto the line for her, then jump onto the line, throw her off the line and let the tram take me instead.'

'An unusually intense solution to the problem,' I replied. 'What did she say?'

'She called her divorce lawyer, and I got a temporary restraining order for my troubles.'

I smiled. 'I was given an ethics class back when I was at uni,' I said. 'Just one class, in first year, where the credits don't count. One hour. When it was over, the teacher said “There you go, your mandatory ethics class is over, thank god,” and left the room, as if he _really_ did not want to do it.'

'Or if he _really_ lacked an understanding of ethics,' Martin replied.

I sipped my tea. 'The university _did_ fire him at the end of the year,' I replied. 'Something about embezzlement of research grant funds.' I sipped my tea. 'Funds earmarked for ethics students.'

Martin chuckled.

'So how would you do it?' Martin asked.

'Solve the trolley problem?' I said.

'Yeah.'

'You're not the only one in the room to think of this dilemma,' I said. 'Half a dozen bad guys on one line and one good guy on the other, or one bad guy on the one line and a bunch of good citizens on the other. I've thought of the different scenarios myself.

'But what if it were, say, one bad guy on the one line and a bunch of bad guys on the other, but the bad guys were willing to reform? Or what if it were that the one bad guy was willing to reform and the others were just, well, unrepentant nazis? Whose death would make the world better off?'

'Or what if they were all physicians on the verge of finding a cure for AIDS?' Martin said.

'Exactly,' I replied. 'We'd be getting into issues of “the needs of the many” and “the greater good,” and then we're waltzing down some street in Ancient Greece and rubbing shoulders with Plato and Aristotle, and I really have no stomach for calamari for breakfast.'

Martin chortled.

'But I do know one thing,' I replied. 'Whichever life or lives I do save, I'd direct them to do well with their lives. Maybe go out and help others.

'And then I'd find the bastard who's going around tying people to tracks and chain _them_ to a track.'

Martin laughed out loud. 'I like that way of thinking,' he said.

'May I ask, Martin, what happened to you?'

'I was a schoolteacher,' Martin replied. 'I married the metalwork teacher. We had a child. Things seemed to be going well. But there were layoffs, and I got fired. We got divorced, we lost out daughter, we got our own back from this Thing who'd murdered her, but I lost my home somehow and ended up on the streets.' He sighed. 'It all happened so fast.'

I topped up his tea as he sat, lost in thought. 'No, actually, I _gave_ her the house,' he said. 'Handed her the keys, told here where the deeds were, told her to move on with her life.' He looked at me. 'I felt that even though we'd both had everything, we'd lost everything too – but she'd lost more, and so I gave of myself to make sure at least one of us had a chance of starting anew.'

'And you fell in with Tony and Janey, and … does the other guy have a name?'

'He gave us the name “Jim,”' Martin said. 'Though it might not be his real name. He does seem a bit paranoid at times, but he's always pulled through in the end.'

'What does he do?' I asked.

'He's a typesetter,' Martin said. 'He worked for a print firm you might have heard of. Qwikprint.'

'I … know of it,' I replied. 'I thought everybody died in that fire.'

'So did I,' Martin replied. 'It happened in broad daylight, and all. There was a body count. Seven people dead. Seven employees. Everybody thought the seventh guy was Jim, but it looks as if the last one may have been a customer.'

'I guess he was lucky,' I said.

'I don't know about that,' Martin replied. 'He was with us at the time. We'd just been staking out the cemetery. Things had been seen wandering about the place at night. Turned out to be just Goths, out to enjoy a bit of sex on some of the graves.'

'So Goths are okay, then,' I said. 'Good job. Letitia would be devastated.'

'Letitia?'

'My PA,' I replied. 'Back at work.' I put my palm to my forehead. 'How am I going to explain this at work?'

'Best not,' Martin said. 'Just in case.'

'Sound idea,' I said. I remembered the note, and took it out of my pocket to look at it.

'You got one of those, too?' Martin asked, as I opened the sheet of paper. The note had been drawn on a single sheet from a spiral bound reporter's pad, like something you'd get from The Works or W H Smith. But something about what was drawn on it made my hackles stand on end.

I say “drawn,” because there wasn't a single word, just doodles, all dots and lines, straight lines, circles, hooks. But they spoke volumes.

'_Think_,' I said, pointing to one of the symbols. '_Bigger picture_. Maybe it also reads _You underestimate the situation_. _Hope_. _Freedom_. _This way_.' I touched a kite-shaped symbol, and felt a strange sensation, as if somebody has left all the windows open in the house in the middle of a blustery day.

Part of me seemed to convey a meaning from just looking at the kite-shaped symbol. '_Sacred duty. Mission. The Calling. The hunt._' I dropped the note on the table. 'Bloody hell,' I said, looking at Martin.

'Yeah,' Martin said, picking it up. 'That's what we all say, first time we get that notice.'

'What is it?' I asked. 'This message. _Think. There's a bigger picture_. Maybe _The stakes are bigger than you think_.' I looked at the other signs, '_Hope and freedom are here, in following this mission_, whatever “The Mission” is.' I looked at Martin. 'What the hell does it mean?'

Martin handed it back to me. 'I think it means _Welcome to the war, conscripts_.'

* * *

It was dark, and the rain was pouring down outside.

I turned on the TV, and the BBC TV show _Flog It _which had been filmed in Chester was being shown. In between the desperate hopefuls selling off their Lalique glassware, brass train plates and stamp collections, the show did a segment in the old Overleigh Cemetery, just outside of town.

'I know that place,' Martin said. 'I can show you all the haunted hot spots.'

A picture of one of the graves appeared on the screen. Black marble, gold leaf lettering. Very posh.

Martin and I glanced at the inscription.

Curzon Pickering

1841-1899

CURSED

TO WANDER

THE EARTH

I looked again. The words beneath the dates now read BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER.

I looked at Martin, who seemed shocked.

'Is that normal?' I asked him. Martin shook his head.

'As far as I know,' he said, 'we only get the one message each.' He looked at me. 'At least, Janey, Tony, Jim and I only ever received one message.'

I looked at the screen, which was now showing an image of someone's old war medal. 'I think we'd better go and take a look. What do you think?'

Martin nodded. 'Sounds like a plan.'

* * *

'I know a way in,' Martin said, as we looked at the fence.

'Show me,' I replied.

Martin took me to where there was a break in the fence, large enough to allow in one person at a time. I squeezed through the gap after him.

'Do you feel it?' Martin asked. 'A chill down the spine. There's a _presence_ here.' He shivered. As did I.

'It's just waves of terror,' I told him. 'Unthinking terror. A desperate need to get away.'

'Time we put on the sight, I think,' Martin said.

'The sight?'

'When you go into that calm place, and They can't warp or influence your mind.'

'Oh, yeah,' I said. 'That.' It took a moment of concentration. I felt the screen go up about me, and the sensations of fear chilling my blood dispersed as I could see them for what they were – projected emotions intended to influence human minds and turn them away from this area.

'That's better,' I replied. We moved into the interior.

'Can you sense something _wrong_ just up ahead?' I asked.

'I think so,' Martin replied. 'It's as if the very earth is rejecting whatever it is.'

'You could be right,' I said, extending a hand to stop him. 'Open grave.'

'Where?'

'Right in front of you,' I said. 'Can't you see it?'

'No,' Martin replied. 'My eyesight hasn't adjusted to the moonlight yet.'

'Odd,' I said. 'I can see the open grave quite clearly.' In fact, I could see things in oddly minute detail: the way the coffin wood and dirt had been pushed up; the bits of wood and silk mixed in with the dirt; what looked like claw marks. 'Something actually forced its way up out of the coffin past dead Flanders poppies, opium poppies, and six feet of dirt.'

I checked out the headstone. 'What was the dead person's name? The man on the television? Curzon Pickering?'

'I think so,' Martin said.

'Looks as if he's grown tired of his accommodations,' I said, 'and he's looking for a new place.'

'Do you know how _nuts_ that sounds?' Martin said.

'I do,' I replied. We pressed on.

'If I interviewed someone who told me that they sneak into graveyards at night to chase around after walking dead people, I'd probably bin their cv.'

'Is that what you do at work?' Martin asked. 'Arrange for job interviews?'

'And conduct them, and train people to conduct them,' I replied.

'So you're in human resources?'

'Yes,' I replied. More wrongness loomed just up ahead. A different kind of wrongness. I motioned for Martin to freeze.

'I can see them, too,' Martin said. He narrowed his eyes. I just focused on the three figures up ahead.

I could see little details about them – how they had somehow gathered shadows about them to conceal their presence, the strange little symbols they wore, which seemed to glow brightly in a colour I couldn't identify; even the light which seemed to ripple over them, concealed from the eyes of ordinary people by their cloaks of shadows.

'We've met someone like this before,' I said to Martin.

'Definitely,' Martin responded. 'Witches.'

At that moment, one of the witches stopped, turned and saw us. She motioned for her companions to press on, and approached us.

'Not just that,' I said, as she drew near and I could see her face. 'I already know her.' My puzzlement grew. 'Letitia?'

The young Goth girl Letitia, whom I'd mentioned to Martin, smiled, though her eyes were puzzled. 'Gregory? What are you doing out here at this time of night, boss?'

* * *

'I could say the same about you,' I replied. 'Why are you here in Chester?'

'We're chasing something,' Letitia replied. 'All the signs and omens were pointing towards this graveyard. Something was attempting to come through.'

'Come through from where?' Martin asked.

'You know how some dead people go to a place where they want to go, and some may go to a place they don't want to go, but ultimately everybody goes to the place where they _deserve_ to go?' Letitia asked, looking at me. 'Someone is coming back from one of those places, and they've already made their escape bid.'

'In a corpse,' I replied.

'Very good, boss,' Letitia said. 'Though how you can know about that …'

'It can't be very viable,' Martin said. 'How long ago did Curzon Pickering die?'

'The entity that's crawled up out of the dirt was not Curzon,' I replied. 'You know I mentioned the open grave?'

Martin nodded.

'What I didn't tell you is that that grave is _fresh_.' I looked at Letitia, who nodded sombrely.

'I saw that, too,' she said. 'An aura of fresh entropy, cool and dark; soil that had been turned over. All those dead poppies. They grow on turned-over soil. Someone dug out the grave, maybe around January at my estimate, put in a new coffin, and put the dirt back on top.'

'The poppies grew during the spring and summer in the airy, broken soil,' I added. 

Letitia nodded. 'It's almost Yule. They were dead when the grave was disturbed again - this time, from below.'

'So who was it who died?' I asked.

'One of your victims?' Martin asked. 'Did you stick a knife in his heart on your altar to Satan?'

Letitia looked at Martin with open scorn. 'Er, whoever you are, Mister, my sisters and I don't do that. We burn vegetable matter.'

'You could just turn the heat down on the grill,' I said. 'Or use a microwave.'

Letitia grinned. She opened her mouth to say something. A cry from nearby interrupted her. She turned and ran in the direction of her sisters.

'They've found him,' I said, looking to Martin. 'Let's go.'

* * *

They'd cornered whoever it was that they'd been tracking, down by the riverbank. As I watched, they wove webs of silken energy about it like spiderwebs. Letitia joined in, weaving more arcane bindings, wrapping the thing in a cocoon of energy.

'Look at that,' I said to Martin.

'I know,' Martin replied. 'I don't know what's worse – the walking shuffler, or the binders.'

'I do,' I said. 'I know what's worse – the being they're holding.'

'Do you think we ought to interfere?' Martin asked. 'Thwart their evil plan?'

I looked closely at the creature they had been binding. It could be seen clearly through the weird magical bindings they were throwing up over it.

I could see what had once been well-manicured hair and nails, a formerly-immaculate Italian wool suit, and expensive Italian leather shoes still covered in dirt. Beneath the dead flesh was a presence, some ephemeral form of darkness and shade, its eyes pools of even greater darkness, a polypous head with what looked like a face contorted in a rictus of hate.

'What do you see?' I asked Martin.

'I see it for what it really is,' Martin replied. 'He died, but he managed to come back from death … into his own body.'

'And?'

'I can see his life, before,' Martin said. 'He was some sort of big shot wizboy, big money man. He owned properties … voted for the Conservatives …' Martin spat at that evil name. 'Oh, never mind now. The man was a monster _before_ he died.'

He squinted. 'Oh!'

'What?' I asked Martin.

'He stole their land,' he said, pointing to Letitia and the other witches. 'Bought it up from under them, bulldozed century-old trees, paved it all over, replaced it with a housing estate. Oh, but he met his green credentials – apparently, he ordered the planting of some trees in another part of town. As if a couple of saplings are going to replace hundred-year-old oaks and birches.'

'No wonder they're pissed off,' I said, as Letitia approached me.

'There were four of us,' she said. 'In addition to his crimes against the land, that privileged bastard raped and murdered our youngest member, Sister Candour.'

'”Sister?” Do you call yourselves by that title, like little Satanic nuns?' Martin asked.

'We're not Satanists,' Letitia said. She looked at me. 'Remember your Marianne Faithful? You'd be old enough.'

'I used to hear her song being played, in the uni's students' union building, back when I was a student,' I said. '_Shall I see tonight, Sister / Bathed in magic greet …_'

Letitia smiled.

'I thought it was “magic grease?”' Martin said.

Letitia looked at him. 'And now your mind's gone down a _very_ fun little side alley,' she said, giggling. She looked me up and down. 'I have absolutely no idea why you're here, or how you could see us, but I'd like to have a chat about what it means for us.'

'Monday? Bright and early?'

'Sure thing, Boss,' Letitia replied.

'Good job,' I said. 'I'd hate it if you quit on me or something drastic. Nobody else can work those computers like you.'

Letitia snapped her fingers. I blinked. They, and their captive, were gone.

The gates of the cemetery were wide open. Martin and I just walked out of there, onto the tree-lined road. Ahead was the Grosvenor Bridge, and a long walk ahead of us to get to my car, parked on the far side of the River Dee.

'I think we need to chat about what we're supposed to be doing,' Martin said. 'Those of us who've heard The Call.'

'Oh?' I said. 'And what is that?'

'We've been given a sign,' Martin said. 'A sign that we must fight evil.' He pointed back towards the cemetery. 'Those young women were in league with evil.'

'Not in my estimation,' I said. 'Not her.'

'How do you know?'

'Because I've seen her work,' I replied. 'She's conscientious, meticulous, organised and dedicated. I myself wondered how she could get all her work done by Friday afternoon. I wondered if it was magic. Now I know – it probably is.'

'But the Devil …'

'Martin,' I said, 'I might not know what sort of hellish things you've seen, or what's out there, but I do know one thing – living, breathing people.' I pointed back towards the cemetery. 'That woman, Letitia, might be a real, breathing spellbinder, but I've known her and chatted with her for two years, and she's never brought this aspect of her life into the workplace. Kept it all to herself, never behaved all witchier-than-thou, never gave me any drama.'

I glanced back down the road. 'I'd stake my reputation that she's a good person,' I said. 'A team worker, despite her dabbling in strangeness.'

'Well, you'd better watch yourself,' Martin replied. 'Some of us take exception to this attitude. “Suffer not a witch to live,” and all that.'

You weren't paying attention to the song she mentioned,' I said.

'_Danger is great joy, dark is bright as fire_

_Happy is our family, lonely is our ward_.'

I looked at Martin. 'Remember that sign earlier? “_Think of the bigger picture_.' It was given to me for a reason, along with the message I received, which wasn't “SMITE AGENTS OF SATAN” or “HEY, JOE, GUESS WHAT? HEAVEN'S JUST REOPENED THE OFFICE OF WITCHFINDER GENERAL AND YOU'VE BEEN DRAFTED!!' - it was “CHOOSE.”

'Choose? Choose what?'

'Choose your friends, maybe,' I said. 'Choose the lesser of two evils. Choose your allies. Choose to give people the benefit of the doubt, until they give you enough rope to hang themselves.'

'As long as you don't _choose_,' Martin said, 'to get yourself killed.'

'Well, that's between me and _my_ God,' I said back. 'And as I am an atheist, I guess my God doesn't have very much to say about my choice. Only that I do.

'And I've always been proud of one thing, when making my decisions,' I added. 'My ability to judge somebody's character.' I looked at Martin. 'She cracked a joke, Martin. Evil practically never cracks jokes. And even if they do, it's cruel and at somebody's expense.'

I checked my watch. 'It's silly o'clock,' I said, getting out my phone. 'I'm calling a taxi. I can pick up the car in the morning.' I looked at Martin. 'Coming?'

'I dunno,' Martin replied. 'You're consorting with witches and that. It doesn't seem right, somehow.'

A light rain began to fall. He looked up, and let the rain fall on his face.

'Come on,' I said. 'You can work out where else to stay tomorrow, if you want to go somewhere else.'

'All right,' Martin said.

I found myself thinking of that song. “Happy is our family – lonely is our ward.” Maybe this was what we were here for, people like Martin, and Tony, and Janey, and me.

Letitia and her friends looked like people who'd been tasked with protecting their “ward” - the Earth. They could have been doing this a very long time. And maybe they could be failing, which is why the weird voices have called us.

Maybe it's our job now.

I thought of Letitia, and kept my fingers crossed that, at least in her case, I'd started my new job on the correct foot.

**Author's Note:**

> A revival of my old Hunter: the Reckoning roleplaying chronicle based on the exploits of Libra, an imbued hunter, who has been given strange powers and a mandate to investigate supernatural beings and goings-on in Chester and Liverpool.
> 
> A cross between Millennium, CSI, The Dead Zone, and Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Hunter: the Reckoning was the White Wolf end-of-millennium game where the ordinary people of the World of Darkness began to fight back.


End file.
